Life. Unrestricted. Podcast: Boost Your Body Image And Recover From Food & Exercise Madness.

Download Episode! Hello there, lovely radicals... Time to unwind! Here's my first bonus episode of "Life. Unrestricted." for you: A guided meditation of 25 minutes. Take this time for yourself and allow yourself to find some peace in the midst of the craziness of daily life. Your body and mind will thank you for it. Enjoy this guided meditation to tame our monkey mind, and to drop into a state of awake presence and full awareness of THIS moment—all we ever have. If you experience your mind wandering off into thoughts and worries, expectations or judgments, just remember that this is normal and it happens to everybody. Just notice that "thinking" is happening, acknowledge the thoughts, and let them go. Over and over again. As if they were clouds passing by. Don't attach any meaning to them, don't hold on to them, just return to the present moment, and focus on the sensation of your breath as it enters your nose and fills your chest, your lungs and your belly. It's all about noticing and returning back to the

Download Episode! Lovely having you here, my fellow traveller! It's Podcast time, which means: It's a great moment to just open our ears and listen to a wonderful woman who has so much to say about what "moderation" really means. In today's episode of the "Life. Unrestricted." Podcast, I have the pleasure to talk to Zoe Nicholson from Melbourne, Australia. Zoe is an accredited practicing dietitian and the owner and director of the highly successful Melbourne based private practice called "figureate"- spelled out like figure and ate, as in "I ate cheesecake". Zoe conducts nutrition seminars and workshops for workplaces and corporations and she has, together with multi-award winning fitness professional Jodie Arnot, established the now well known "Moderation Movement" in Australia. Here's Zoe! She will tell us: – How she grew up without constant diet-talk, weight-obsessing or body-shaming – Why it is so important what kind of role-models we are for our children – When she found out that, basically, the rest o

In this episode of the "Life. Unrestricted." podcast, you’re going to hear Tracy Brown from Naples, Florida. She is a nutrition therapist, registered licensed dietitian and somatic attuned eating coach who has offered counseling in private practice since 2006. She specializes in treatment of eating disorders and eating problems for both adults and children and she also routinely teaches intuitive eating workshops and disordered eating related talks in the North Central Florida area, including Santa Fe College and Flager College, St. Augustine, Florida. Today, and only on the "Life. Unrestricted." podcast, she’s will tell us all of this: – How being highly sensitive as a kid led her to numb her feelings with an obsession to be the perfect kid – How her obsession quickly turned into meal-skipping, dieting, and taking advice from fitness-magazines at face value – Why it took years of purging, binging, restricting and suffering before she realized that happiness wasn’t to be found by chasing after the skinny idea

Download Episode! In this episode of the "Life. Unrestricted." podcast, I get to talk to Chris Cole from Boulder, Colorado. Chris is a life coach and works with clients in recovery from any number of addictions, mood or behavioral issues. He has been through quite a journey himself. In fact, it was such a rollercoaster ride that he wrote a book about it: It's called "The Body Of Chris – a Memoir of Obsession, Addiction and Madness". Chris is a highly compassionate, positive force that helps people find their truth and their unique healing by offering an experienced perspective, a radical wellness orientation and an encouraging relationship that is crucial to sustainable growth. Listen in and hear Chris’ amazing story: – What factors contributed to him feeling ashamed of his body in childhood – Why early restriction only exacerbated his difficult relationship to food – How being bullied and fat-shamed as a boy made him obsessed with losing weight – How he learned to binge eat and the real danger of the conce

Download Episode! Hello, lovely radicals! Time for another podcast ride; hold on tight! In this episode of the "Life Unrestricted" podcast, we are getting to know Glenys Oyston. Glenys is a Registered Dietitian who does NOT believe in dieting; she has seen behind the diet-culture BS and has become a Health At Every Size dietitian. Like many of her fellow RD’s that follow the Health At Every Size (HAES, for short) principles, she knows that it’s much more helpful to improve our relationship to our bodies and food than focusing on weight-loss. She has been a diet-victim for decades, just like many of us, and she has experienced just how much attention and congratulations we get when weight is lost. Therefore she knows exactly why so many people dread to gain weight. But instead of keeping on living in the pre-hell of either lusting after food or restricting it, she got taught a better way. She got educated about HAES, Health At Every Size, and as she says, it has transformed her life and the way she thinks abo

Download Episode! Friends! Welcome to the third episode of the Life. Unrestricted. Podcast! In this episode, I talk to Nicola Rinaldi from Boston (USA) about her journey from losing her period – due to too much exercise and not enough food – to recovery, and in her case a beautiful family with three boys. The talks about how her love of exercise became unhealthy and how things really turned nasty when she also started dieting in order to lose "those ten pounds". She came to regret that: She stopped menstruating and subsequently almost slipped into a full blown eating disorder. Fortunately, she was able to allow herself to get better: Her dreams of having a family of her own meant that she had to take care of herself. She exercised less, ate more and finally got her period back and started a family. She is passionate about helping women to see why their cycle is so important for their mood, their sleep, their bones and their overall health whether or not they want children of their own. She helped hundreds

Download Episode! Hey, lovely radicals... Ear-treat ahead! In this episode of the "Life Unrestricted" podcast, Virgie Tovar and I chat about how she became the unapologetic badass she is today. As you might guess, she wasn’t always as confident as she is nowadays, and she had to learn a lot about life, herself, sexuality, feminism and diet-culture to finally be able to liberate herself from the oppressive, fat-phobic cultural paradigm that keeps women desperately trying to fit in, often in the form of dieting and obsessing over their weight. She experienced first hand, what it means to be fat-shamed, stigmatized and devalued and she is now fiercely on a mission to educate people about the ugly truths behind the merciless profit-seeking mechanisms of the diet-industry, media-literacy, the effects of weight-stigma on mental and physical health and the ways of changing the current narrative. Virgie shares her story with us and you’ll hear: – How early it got into her head that women should "lose weight" – What

Download Episode! In this episode of the "Life Unrestricted" podcast, you are going to meet one of my favorite ladies in the world of body positivity and body image: It's Summer Innanen from Vancouver, whose podcast has literally changed my life. In my opinion, every woman can use a good dose of Summer in her life! She works as a Body Image Coach who has her own past with diets, restriction, body insecurity and exercise addiction, and she now helps women to stop living behind the number on their scales, to ditch the diet demons for good and to develop real inner confidence. Today, and only on the "Life Unrestricted" podcast, she's letting us know some things about herself that she hasn't shared anywhere else before. So listen in and learn: – How being  body-shamed, bullied and being surrounded by diet-talk and an ever-dieting mother contributed to her slipping into a very obsessive mindset – What she was trying to achieve by "becoming thinner" and why so many of us fall into this trap – Why she never realiz

Download Episode! In this episode of the "Life Unrestricted" podcast, I get to talk to Dr. Linda Bacon from Berkeley, California, USA. It’s a lucky day for all of us, because we get to listen to her highly insightful knowledge and opinion about our relationship to food, bodies and health. Dr. Linda Bacon is a health professor and researcher on the inside track of weight-regulation science, she holds graduate degrees in physiology, psychology and exercise metabolism with a specialty in nutrition. She has conducted federally funded studies on diet and health and is well-published in top scientific journals, and has written two books, first, her highly acclaimed bestseller "Health At Every Size – The Surprising Truth About Your Weight" and recently "Body Respect – What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leave Out Or Just Fail To Understand About Weight". She is currently a health professor at City College of San Francisco and an Associate Nutritionist at the University of California Davis. She is sharing h

Download Episode! My friend, how nice to see you are tuning back in! In this episode of the "Life. Unrestricted." podcast, I get to talk to Vania Phitidis from Sussex, Great Britain. Vania is an Intuitive Eating Counsellor, an MB-EAT teacher, MB-EAT being the acronym for Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training) as well as a Self Esteem Mentor. She has a master in Education for Sustainability from London South Bank and a Bachelor degree in Psychology and Art history from VITS. In order to resolve her own body image issues and eating disorders she found that she had to let go of 5 things. 1 – unrealistic expectations of herself, 2 dieting, 3 restricting particular foods, 4 trying to get and stay skinny and 5 attempting to be perfect. Sounds easy, but was a lifelong process that she will tell us about. What she is focused on nowadays is being her most powerful self and helping others to enhance the quality of their own life and make better use of it than eternally dieting. For me, it’s vulnerability time

Download Episode! My friend, lovely seeing you here again! In today's episode of the Life Unrestricted podcast, I talk to Kathleen A. Bishop from San José, California. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor and Relapse Prevention Specialist. In private practice, she specializes in Eating and Substance Use Disorders and she works at a non-profit providing Intensive Outpatient Treatment to clients with Substance Use Disorder and cooccurring mental health conditions like anxiety, depression or Eating Disorders. Kathleen, who is also a body positive size diversity activist who promotes Health At Every Size (HAES) principles to end stigma and mistreatment that is associated with weight, has overcome her own body image obsessions and she shares her great insights with us! In this episode of the Life Unrestricted podcast, she talks about ... all of it. You'll even hear about the craziest diet you have ever heard. Wait for it. Horse urine is involved.... But more importantl

Are you ready to meet the first drag queen who is actually trapped in a woman’s body? In today's episode of the Life Unrestricted Podcast, I am chatting with Kaila Prins, the woman with the most awesome drag make up I've ever seen. She is a body positive burlesque and pole dancer and by that she is a performing woman... performing "woman"! Kaila is also a body positive wellness and recovery coach, feminist writer and speaker and a fellow podcastine... She talks about her 13-year battle with eating disorders, calorie counting, yo-yo dieting and compulsive exercise and has the most amazing guests. Kaila is one of the precious few voices who bring the taboo topics of eating disorders, exercise addiction, and body image obsession into the open and is an inspiration for thousands – myself included. This show will leave you feeling ready to change the world, one step towards self-acceptance at a time. You will hear us talk about: – How "healthy" and "skinny" have nothing to do with each other – How we are potential

Download Episode! Lovely ones... Yay! Welcome to episode 5 of the "Life Unrestricted Podcast"... ... You are going to love what you hear. In this episode of the "Life Unrestricted Podcast", you are going to meet Sarah Vance from Cincinnati, a truly fabulous chick who knows exactly what it means when we let the mission to "get our goal body" take over our lives. Sarah experienced first hand how – back when "her body was a project" – life can feel increasingly horrible, and that the more obsessed we become with weight and appearance, the more our health is at the risk of declining. As a former bikini model and exercise addict who was severely obsessed with food, weight, fitness and her appearance, she knows the battle of so many people in today's society. She has managed to step out of restriction misery and has healed her compulsive relationship to exercise. It has become her mission to help others reclaim their freedom with their bodies and their relationship to food. She is a body image coach who speciali

Download Episode! Boom! Welcome to episode number 4 of the Life. Unrestricted. Podcast! In this episode, Keri-Anne Livingstone and I are getting real about... getting real. As a Certified Empowerment Coach, impassioned speaker and "Edu-Tainer", Keri-Anne helps others towards radical self-acceptance, overcoming fear and how to be the truest version of themselves. She shares with us how, up until just a few years ago, she was an overwhelmed mother and disconnected woman living an unfulfilled corporate lifestyle, and only after many unexpected challenges in her life, she transformed her mindset by exploring the one concept that she is now teaching us... "Daring To Suck". Listen in and learn: – What she means when she says "dare to suck" – What the most important steps are in this process – How you can learn to tune in and get courageous enough to speak up – How we can implement her concept "Daring To Suck" into our lives – How a simple mindset-shift can propel us out of victim-mentality – Why it's not helping

Download Episode! That’s it! Here it is: The Life. Unrestricted. Podcast! The show that might just make you feel better about yourself, your body and your worth beyond your jeans size. So before you start the next diet to „finally lose that weight“, stop right there and listen in. Let me ask you: When is enough enough? Aren’t you tired of hating your body, tired of counting calories, tired of making your scale decide whether you get to feel good today or (more likely) not? Aren’t you tired of feeling guilty for eating what you like, tired of exercising obsessively to get rid of that guilt? Aren't yo tired of the negative self-talk-chatter in your head? Aren’t we all? So. Welcome home. Welcome to the Life. Unrestricted. Podcast. Let me take you on a different journey.   As I recover from excess dieting, disordered eating, from exercise addiction, and – generally – an awful body image, I want to share what I learn, share my struggles and, most of all, I want to bring you the very best experts and the most i